I can’t finish this paper since it seems fairly confused. I’d just point out that the paper’s arguments, being motivated by “what’s necessary for research”, are irrelevant. It doesn’t particularly matter that researchers have a normative system, so long as they don’t have a preconception about the depth of adherence. For example, if my normative system damns witches ans harlots, I don’t really have a problem for research: I know how many witches and harlots there are, I also think they’re bad people. In fact, I might think society is very much in trouble because of their number; so long as I don’t engage in wishful thinking about social composition, this fact changes nothing.
Secondly, the argument ghat we can’t arbitrate normative standards is silly. Since all of them have to be implemented physically and have calculable products, we can always guarantee that rationality is at least a meta standard via a simulation argument.
I can’t finish this paper since it seems fairly confused. I’d just point out that the paper’s arguments, being motivated by “what’s necessary for research”, are irrelevant. It doesn’t particularly matter that researchers have a normative system, so long as they don’t have a preconception about the depth of adherence. For example, if my normative system damns witches ans harlots, I don’t really have a problem for research: I know how many witches and harlots there are, I also think they’re bad people. In fact, I might think society is very much in trouble because of their number; so long as I don’t engage in wishful thinking about social composition, this fact changes nothing.
Secondly, the argument ghat we can’t arbitrate normative standards is silly. Since all of them have to be implemented physically and have calculable products, we can always guarantee that rationality is at least a meta standard via a simulation argument.